On 4th June around 20 people gathered in Bank Gardens, Stroud for a picnic. There were various reasons for being there as an alternative to all the red, white and blue Diamond Jubilee celebrations – including the 35th anniversary of the Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’ single and highlighting that the Queen owns 1/6th of all the land on earth!

Wikipedia says of the song: “Although many believe it was created because of the Jubilee, the band denies it, Paul Cook saying that, “It wasn’t written specifically for the Queen’s Jubilee. We weren’t aware of it at the time. It wasn’t a contrived effort to go out and shock everyone.” Johnny Rotten has explained the lyrics as follows: “You don’t write ‘God Save The Queen’ because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and you’re fed up with them being mistreated.” His intentions were apparently to evoke sympathy for the English working class, and a general resentment for the monarchy.”

For more about landownership see Kevin Cahill’s book, ‘Who Owns Britain’ (2002) – it took 13 years to research and write. A second edition is due in the Autumn. There is 60 million acres of land in Britain to share out among 62 million inhabitants. 1% of the population (159,000 families) own 71% of the land. Amazingly freeholds are all in fact owned by the Queen so they are leases from the Queen in the small print of land title deeds: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/05/496425.html